Registration is now open for Autodesk University 2012, to be held at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, November 27-29, 2012. Registration costs will increase on October 15, so sign up early.

Choose from more than 800 classes and labs organized in 21 tracks, 10 PowerTracks, 6 Innovation Forums, and 1 Symposium. If traveling is not an option for you, consider AU Virtual, which is free to all AU members and includes hundreds of various classes in multiple languages.

Follow the conversation on Twitter #AU2012. If you are already signed up, make sure to check your class schedule every now and then for changes. During the conference, consider taking one of the many Autodesk Certification exams for FREE. Certifications are offered for AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Inventor, Revit Arch, 3DS Max, Maya, Moldflow, and Alias. Check the link above for more info.

You can also find more info at the AU Facebook page, and you can RSVP while you are there on the event page. Last but not least, check out the AU videos on Youtube.

Service Pack 1 (yeah, it looks like "updates" are back to being named "service packs" again) for AutoCAD 2013 is available for download. Pay particularly close attention to the readme file because this SP introduces some new system variables and a new startup switch for disabling lisp and other startup functions.

Be sure to download the correct 32-bit or 64-bit version.

AutoCAD 2013 Service Pack 1

Generally speaking, in AutoCAD you either select one or more entities and choose a command -or- you choose a command and then select one or more entities. When you are finished with the command, AutoCAD returns to the previous state where nothing was selected. I have noticed a different behavior in Civil 3D when working with C3D objects. When you select an object and perform certain commands (such as properties), when you are done the object remains selected.

For certain tasks in Civil 3D, I have Quick Properties (QP) enabled. I started noticing in 2013 that when QP is enabled and I select an entity, the focus is removed from the AutoCAD window. In other words, the crosshairs change to the pointer. So if I want to pick a Grip or a command on the contextual ribbon - it requires an extra pick. One pick to restore focus to the window and a second pick to activate the grip or menu item.

In this image, the manhole is selected, QP is visible, and the crosshairs have been replaced by the standard windows pointer.

In the last post, we added some math formulas to numeric fields, but pointed out that this does not work with traditional Date fields. So what are we doing here? There is a different method that you can use that will allow you to do this.

Instead of using a Date field, we are going to use a DIESEL expression. If that sounds strange, don't fear. I will not cover intricate details regarding DIESEL functions and you will not need it for this tutorial.

Here is a little tip on using math in fields that reference other fields. How could this help you? Let's look at an example where we will create a field that shows us 1/3 of the length of a line.

Sometimes it may be faster to use the -INSERT command to avoid the dialog. Of course it helps if the block name is short, but if you know the block is in the support file search path then give this a shot. Here are some tips when using this method.

Here is a unique situation that I have run across a few times recently.

We have one shape file that we use for all of our complex linetypes. It's name is "my-custom,shx". Suddenly one day, a user cannot load linetypes, he gets this error:

Line 63 of the LIN file is a complex linetype that references the shape file "my-custom.shx". Well, I know the shape file is available, and I know there is no error in the LIN file.

If you are about to install DWG Trueview 2013, or you are in the process of doing so and are running into problems, read on.

Here is a quick tip on drawing tangent lines and arcs. Before getting started, you can easily drawing tangent arc and line segments when using POLYLINEs, but we are going to discuss using plain LINE and ARC entities.